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Les Troyens

Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens is one of the most complex and rewarding operas in the repertory. It's been dubbed "The Latin Ring" for its scale and epic arc. While much shorter than Wagner's masterpiece, Les Troyens is a long opera, originally intended to be presented over two evenings, with an average running time of up to six hours if intermissions are counted.

This series of articles will provide an in-depth analysis of this formidable work, which has not enjoyed the popularity that it deserves due to the enormous demands it imposes on an opera company. Les Troyens is not easy to stage, given its vast chorus, long duration, frequent and radical scene changes, and numerous characters. Only the most accomplished opera companies are able to put together a convincing production of this piece, which explains the rarity of its stagings, complete recordings, and video discs.
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This article will examine the differences between Berlioz's operatic masterpiece Les Troyens and its literary source, Virgil's Aeneid. Berlioz wrote his own libretto, borrowing extensively from his source, but also changing it in various ways.

Les Troyens is mostly based on books I, II, and IV of the Aeneid but also uses material from other parts of the poem.
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An entry for 1854 in Berlioz's memoirs reads: "For the last three years I have been tormented by the idea of a vast opera for which I would write both the words and the music ... I am resisting the temptation of carrying out this project, and I hoe I will resist to the end."
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This article intends to examine the intellectual context for the opera Les Troyens by Berlioz, and how its theme is inserted in a certain concept of History, and demonstrates how it is musically conveyed.
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This article introduces some pointers about the real cities behind the legendary sources for Berlioz's opera Les Troyens. It's just as a matter of curiosity and trivia, therefore it is placed in the cluster "Around the Opera." We also address what happened to the legendary Aeneas after the events in the opera.
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Les Troyens is scored for a large orchestra, with piccolos, English horn, four bassoons, trumpets and piston cornets, six or more harps, two dozen players off-stage, and an enormous chorus.

Technically speaking, it has the structure of a numbers opera, but Berlioz doesn't always engage in traditional recitatives and arias, but also employs freer structures such as monologue, scene, and pantomime. His dialogues and narratives are set down over orchestral movements rather than a simple accompaniment. The orchestra therefore does fill the gaps and provides imagery, which in some respects evokes Wagner's operas of the same period.
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Let's talk about the vocal demands for the singers in Les Troyens, and some notable performers who took upon themselves to do justice to this formidable work.

Aeneas, or Énée in French, is a Trojan hero, son of Venus and Anchise. This tenor role was created by Jules-Sébastien Monjauze. It is a nightmare to cast, and one of the explanations for the fact that Les Troyens is not an opera that is often given, since it escapes the possibilities of most opera houses.
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There is a complete Les Troyens on YouTube, high def image, good sound, and it is Sir John Eliot Gardiner's spectacular performance at the Châtelet in Paris (unfortunately fragmented in several small clips):

38 recordings of Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz, up to 2007

Many of these recordings are not complete. We need to get down to number 16 to have the first complete performance of Les Troyens ever (actually, it was recorded a little later). It's the one by Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden in 1969.

First of all, let's start with the first staging, the premiere in 1863. Here you will find sketches of the original sets (these are just acts III to V, but they were divided for this staging of Les Troyens à Carthage in five acts), and then a full review of the performance, in French, as published on a Paris newspaper at the time. Then, scrolling down, you'll find video clips of modern stagings.

This material was recovered from the excellent website www.hberlioz.com maintained by Dr. Monir Tayeb and Dr. Michel Austin. The French newspaper article can be found here: